This BlackBerry Analyst is Astonishingly Bearish

It’s a broadly destructive phenomenon and nobody likes it, but when analysts speak, stocks move. Shares of BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) traded steadily downward on Friday morning, and were off as much as 3.98 percent at noon. In the absence of other major catalysts, the reason seems to be a downgrade issued by an analyst at MKM Partners.

According to Forbes, the analyst cut his rating on the stock from Neutral to Sell, and lowered his price target from $12 to $10, 25.6 percent below Thursday’s closing price. His reasons are largely an aggregate of the same concerns that other bears have: expectations for soft sales, uncertainty over the application ecosystem (the platform has just 10 percent of the most-popular Android apps, and less than 5 percent of the most-popular iOS apps, according to the analyst), and an undifferentiated brand.

“Our new price target reflects the lower probability of success we attribute to BlackBerry 10 following our testing of the Z10 and observing BB10’s momentum stall out in the U.K. after only a few weeks,” wrote the analyst, who forecasts a shockingly high probability of failure…